Q&A: Keith Wilman, president of CSC northern region

Keeping a full order book is a continuous process

CSC UK has had a good couple of years, picking up significant contracts where some of its outsourcing rivals have stumbled.

The NHS National Programme in the north-west, Royal Mail and National Grid Transco (NGT) have boosted the CSC UK order book by $4.8bn.

Computing talked exclusively to Keith Wilman, president and chief executive of CSC's Northern region about the challenges of winning and managing so many high-profile deals.

Why do you believe CSC is succeeding?

Last year we signed Royal Mail, Marconi, NGT and the NHS, so if you add the total contract value of those, plus a number of re-signings, such as BHS, Allders, Gallaghers and Whitbread, you get to $4.8bn. That was the headline that made everybody sit-up and ask what CSC had been doing.

BHS is a good example of what we do well because it was the first outsourcing contract we signed back in 1992. We have re-signed them for seven years, which means the ultimate relationship is something like 18 years. So not only are we signing new deals, but we are extending others and from the point of view of customer satisfaction that says a lot.

Why are we successful? If we knew that we would bag it up.

There are some ways in which we differentiate ourselves from our prime competitors, IBM and EDS, and one of those is flexibility. When we go to market, we go with a way to fit a business solution to the client's requirements. That differentiates us from IBM and EDS. They sell a process: 'This is the way to do things.' We come at it from a different angle. We say, 'What is it you want to do?'

The second factor is our people. We nearly always get the people vote and we nearly always get the union's support. The words of Peter Skyte, the Amicus national officer responsible for Royal Mail, would be pitched something like: 'If you have to do this dastardly deed of outsourcing then CSC are the best of a bad lot.'

That's a recommendation and we are very proud of the fact that we have had a partnership agreement with Amicus since 2000. We work very closely with them and we meet every quarter. That's very important.

The third factor is that we work on continuous improvement - a process going on since 1997. We work to get the certificates, the awards and the great thing is, you have to renew it every year. You can't just stop and start, so continuous improvement means exactly that.

What have you achieved since your consortium took on the Royal Mail contract last year?

David Burden, the chief information officer of the Royal Mail, has been quoted as saying that its IT now costs 40 to 50 per cent less as a result of using CSC and that speaks for itself. After a year, to hear that we have contributed to costs savings and that they are pleased with the service is good. But we are also pleased with what Royal Mail has contributed to CSC. Look at the Royal Mail call centre in Chesterfield, which has won national awards for its capability.

We saw that, seized upon it and built on it and now it serves a lot of other customers and not just the Royal Mail. There was a huge pool of talented people there, and in the first three months at least 150 people had been deployed off through other parts of CSC playing very significant roles within the organisation.

The lead man, Kevin Brown, joined us, and led our NHS bid. He joined us in June and had secured the deal by Christmas.

The NHS contracts were particularly competitive. What approach did you take?

I put it down to our flexibility and relationship management. We set our sights on the North West - we didn't go after multiple sites. We chose the North West because that was where we had the most critical mass.

Through our business with British Aerospace, we have people in Preston and Chorley and in the Midlands we still have quite a lot of people through Ford and MG Rover.

The uniqueness of the NHS is that on day one we didn't buy a lot of assets from the client and we didn't get a lot of people. What we needed on day one was 700 people. The speed with which [NHS director general of IT] Richard Granger let that contract meant we signed up the day before Christmas Eve and we started the day after the New Year, so we needed people immediately and we could do that. Co-incidentally we signed NGT almost at the same time, so we were able to occupy some of NGT's buildings in Solihull.

Managing people in an outsourcing environment is rarely straightforward. How do you achieve that flexibility of resources?

We use alliances. With Royal Mail we had BT and Xansa alongside us as best of breed players. With NHS we did the same thing. We took Hedra, for change management, and iSoft and some smaller partners. So it is about going to market with an alliance but also behaving like it is an alliance.

CSC has been a leader in the way it manages its partners. We will commit values and we will commit revenues and our success will be their success and in return for that we ask for realistic prices and good service values that are consistent with that, and we will measure them as we are measured. That forges a partnership.

With Royal Mail, when we go the table we go with BT and Xansa. The client will get one point of contact but he will also get our partners. That is a differentiator. It's easy to turn up with a huge number of sub-contractors and demonstrate a big partnership, but it is very difficult to manage alliances with lots and lots of partners. It's all about cutting the cake up, but cutting it up in sensible chunks.

The way the NHS contracts were chosen and awarded was quite controversial at the time. How did you find it?

We applaud the way in which Richard Granger let the contract. He managed to award those contracts efficiently and speedily and usually these things take so long and so much money is wasted. From an industry viewpoint, Granger did us a great favour. From an NHS viewpoint going at it with speed and objectivity sends a very strong message to the user community.

Getting the community to use the system is a key part of our contractual objectives and obligations. So going in there and getting the client and the customer to understand the system and be ready to use it is a key part. That is what Richard believes will really improve the NHS - that it is going to improve the nation's health and is a meaningful and sensible thing to do.

The government objective is moving from an NHS that cures, to one that provides prevention and this project is something that will do that. The information in these systems is key to moving to the NHS of tomorrow.